Contacting the Record Label

Dear Sir/Madam,
I am a year 13 student currently attending Walton High School, Stafford. I am writing to request permission to use the Snow Patrol song - 'You could be happy' for our A2 media studies coursework which would consist of creating a music video for the song. This would be strictly for educational purposes and completely non profit making. Your co-operation would be much apprieciated. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Potential Song Choices

1) A-punk - Vampire weekend
2) Matchbox - The kooks
3) Choices - The Hoosiers
4) Elizebeth - Kid British
5) razorlight - Somewhere else
6) Razorlight - America
7) Snow Patrol - Run
8) Snow Patrol - You could be happy

After doing our questionnaire, we decided as indie was the most popular genre of the ages 16-24 we would definitely chose a song of this type from the list above. I researched into some of the more popular songs to see how they were reviewed in the public when released.

A PUNK - VAMPIRE WEEKEND
The music video directed by Garth Jennings, that was said to convey the song's "spiky energy," used footage of the band performing as sped up stop-motion figures, simulating winter and underwater scenes during the performance. Despite the band being sped up, they "never miss an upstroke beat. The song received positive and negative feedback from the public. On a good note the song was said to have a "spunky drive, pogo-inducing rhythm, and subtle but hugely effective sonic accents" and said that "while solid. However some critics were more negative "A-Punk" was not the best song from their debut album due to it being "a little too uptempo to let their disarmingly clever melodies breathe".

RAZOR LIGHT - AMERICA
Razor light with America stormed the charts reaching number 1 within 2 weeks, critics mentioned they were the up and coming new indie band and couldn't wait to see what else was to come from the band. The song America was described as both touching but entertaining a real hit. However there were some negatives about the song sounding similar to others with specific chords, also being fairly repetitive. Some listeners found their music slightly depressing and boring.

SNOW PATROL - RUN
It brought the band its first taste of mainstream success, reaching #5 on the UK charts. Their version of the song was described as "phenomenal" however others thought Snow Patrol's rendering is dark and moody. This was when Leona Lewis's cover of "run" out-shined snow patrol receiving better feedback The Sentinel described the single as "so much better" than Snow Patrol's original song. "It's powerful, painful and the choir behind it takes it on to another level.

SNOW PATROL - YOU COULD BE HAPPY
This song from critics and listeners received 100% positive feedback, touching, emotional and simply fantastic as it was described by the times. The lyrics portray a real story that listeners can connect and relate to making it extremely compatible. Although there has only been a simple animated video made, the song managed still to reach a high position in the charts which is a respectable achievement. No proper music video being made only leaves the fans excited to see what comes next from the most popular Snow Patrol.




We finally decided on the decision to use this song for our music video because there was only an animated version made therefore inspiration purely came from our research and ideas. Adding to this, from my research not only did it suit the indie genre we were looking for but it received 100% positive feedback from critics and many listeners. The song also emulated several different emotions and feelings which we felt we could come up with a concept quite easily to and adapt ideas around it.

Market Research - Getting Feedback

Once we had decided on the song we were going to use We collected information from different focus groups with various ages both at school and at adults works to get a variety. This meant the age groups were already clustered together, making information more valid and easier to collect. By having the candidates sat down with time to spare, it meant we could delve deeper into their reactions and expand on what they wrote on the forms provided.

This particular group was a year 10 class, and with permission from the teacher in charge we spent some time working with them to see exactly what they thought of the song and whether or not what thoughts or imagery instantly came into their head and what emotions or feelings came about from the song. The results were interesting as we found mixed opinions with a large majority liking Drum and base, as well as liking the Alternative rock song! We found out that the candidates who did not enjoy the song shared similar reasons. For example the main reason the focus group did not like the song was because of the slow tempo. This was further outlined when a large segment of the group raised their hand to liking fast pace drum and base group pendulum. Also lots of imagery such as " a rainy day" "stars in the sky" and emotions "sad" "depressing" "break ups" were emulates through the song. Therefore from these results from the year 10 class we discovered that we would not be aiming our music video at this age audience, however it helped us come up with some interesting ideas for costumes, props and mise-en-scene for our video.

Questionnaire Research

We gave out a questionnaire to 120 people between the ages of 12 and 60 to find out what different ages thought of our song choice for our music video.

The questions we asked were...

· Age?

· Gender?

· What did you think of the song?

· Would you listen to this song out of choice?

· What are the first thoughts that come to mind associated with this song? (locations, events, type of people)

· What is your favourite type of music?

52% of the people were female

48% of the people were males

We split them into categories to group our results together and then into male and female

12-25 = 42 people 20 male: 22 females

25-45 = 40 people 21 males: 19 females

45-60 = 39 people 17 males: 22 females

When we asked these ages, male and female would they listen to the song out of choice these are the results we received

Over all from these results, it proved that our song appeals to a younger audience of 12-25 as they had the highest percentages of 91% and 75%, which is what we expected as the song we chose is from a more modern and recent band.

However the majority of 25-45 year olds would also listen to the song however not as much as the age below. Also the song proved not to be popular with the ages 45-60 mainly choosing not to listen to it out of choice. Although the ages 12-25 proved to like the song the most, we also discovered that it was also more popular with the females rather than males, having higher percentages in all age groups. Therefore within our music video need to have aspects that are aimed at a younger audience and only slightly towards a female audience also.

When we asked the question "What are your first thought that come to mind associated with this song?" The chart below shows the most popular ideas which eventually helped us come up with notions for our music video.

When we asked the question "What is your favorite type of music?" The pie chart shows the results we got from our questionnaire

Clearly from these results the most popular results were indie, rnb and pop however with indie being the largest proportion and appealing to the highest percentage of audience we decided to make our music video with this type of music due to being the most popular.